Kitchen organization tips to reduce your kitchen time

Beginner’s guide to Kitchen Organization

A well-organized kitchen always helps in saving your time in the kitchen and helps you cook more efficiently.

As always, I try to provide solutions that’ll help you to do all your necessary tasks in minimum time so that you can have some time saved for yourself to do what you really like to do. Because, c’mon mom, you need to spend some time on yourself to keep yourself charged and (most importantly) sane!!

So, these kitchen organization tips will do the same for you and will surely help in reducing your kitchen time and giving you more time of the day to tackle other things or just enjoy a nice book.

#1. Keep it simple!

Okay, so first of all, if you need a well-organized kitchen then you need to keep it simple a.k.a. de-clutter it!

Believe me, keeping it simple always saves time and makes it easy for you to keep everything organized and tidy.

Related: How to keep it simple and save more time.

Keep only those items that you truly use, and toss all the other things out that you don’t really need/use.

If you are like me then you like to keep every bowl set or tea set received as a gift, hoping that one day you’d use that set. But in reality, that day never arrives!! And you end up stacking all those boxes (really big boxes) in your kitchen cabinets which leaves no enough space for the necessary food containers or the kitchen utensils!

So, my friend, just get rid of those boxes. Because you already have enough bowls or teacups!! Donate them or gift them to your other friends and relatives (unless that gift is very important to you). Toss the damaged items or the worn-out pans or expired food items and create more free space in your kitchen for the meaningful organization.

Related: How to declutter- tips for a beginner.

#2. Organize the kitchen cabinets & pantry shelves

Once you’ve cleared up more space in your kitchen by de-cluttering, now it’s easier to rearrange and organize your kitchen cabinets and pantry shelves.

While organizing the cabinets and pantry, make sure you can see and reach everything easily because in case of food storage we tend to forget what we have if it can’t be seen or found easily.

Assign a permanent place for everything – a default home! And make sure you put everything back to its default home after use.

Having a permanent place for each and everything that you use in your kitchen is very important because this way you don’t waste your time searching for something that you want as you know for sure where to find it.

#3. Keep frequently used things within your arm’s reach

While organizing your kitchen, keep in mind to keep all those utensils/food containers that you use frequently, within your arm’s reach, so that you don’t waste your time walking between the pantry and different cabinets of the kitchen while you cook!

Keeping commonly used things within the arm’s reach helps you to cook flawlessly and in relatively less time.

#4. Smart use of space

When it comes to organizing, it never seems like you have enough storage space or sometimes you end up arranging items in a row in front of another row and it makes it difficult to see what’s behind that front row of containers. Or you have to dig to the back of the cabinet to find what you need!

To avoid this you need to use your storage space smartly! And when you use that space smartly you end up storing more things in less space!

You can use tiered shelves organizers to utilize the vertical space, as they make easy to see everything put on the different levels of the shelf. The tension rods can be used to divide the space to organize containers of different shapes and sizes. A magazine rack can be used as a can holder or an over-the-door shoe holder can be hung at the back of the pantry door to keep spice containers or snacks or seasoning mixes and more.

You can use the back of the cabinet door to hang measuring cups and spoons or store pot lids using hooks or attach a magazine rack to the back of the cabinet door to hold the chopping boards.

#5. Categorize food

Categorize the food item while placing them – just like a library!!

You can categorize according to the food types, like put all the grains together or keep all the spices in one place/cabinet or all the flours can be stored on the same row of the shelf.

Or you can categorize according to the meals you cook most frequently, like all the ingredients of pasta can be placed together and likewise.

Do what works for you and categorize the food items and organize likewise.

#6. Use uniform, see-through containers

Maybe you have all the different shaped and sized containers to store your food items, but this diversity can make it difficult to find anything easily and it doesn’t look quite organized!

So, after categorizing the food items, I would recommend you to use similarly shaped see-through containers with the same size for one category.

You can use different sizes and shapes of containers for different categories but for each category keep it all similar. This way you can find what you need with just one look at the shelve, and the see-through containers make it more easy to find what you need. Plus your shelves and cabinets will look really neat and well-organized!

#7. Label everything

Labeling every container helps a lot. It solves a lot of problems and confusion even if you have the see-through containers.

So, label every container and you can pick up the right ingredient with just one glance at the container.

It also makes it easy to find anything for your husband or kids or someone new to your kitchen who wants to help you with cooking!

#8. Use baskets

You can use baskets to put all the items that don’t fit elsewhere.

Put these baskets on open shelves and stack items in it. And you will have a neatly organized shelf in your kitchen!

#9. Try a junk drawer

Yeah, A Junk Drawer!! You read it right!

If you don’t want to invest in baskets to stack things that don’t fit anywhere, you can try a junk drawer for the same.

Put anything that doesn’t have a home, in this drawer instead of putting elsewhere, and keep your kitchen from getting cluttered.

#10. Add up more storage wherever you can

Do you think your kitchen cabinets and pantry shelves are not enough to store everything you have?

You can add up some storage to your kitchen!

Use the space in your kitchen creatively to add some storage. For example, you can add a few shelves in the corners or above the fridge (sounds odd? but it will look good when you add up some decorative pieces to these shelves along with your kitchenware!), or maybe fit a vertical trolley in the space between the fridge and the wall to store spice containers or mixed seasonings.

Just look at your kitchen with a new eye and figure out where you can add up some extra storage. It will definitely help you to organize your kitchen more effectively and keep everything stored properly!!

Who doesn’t love a good looking, tidy, clean and neat kitchen? A well-organized kitchen never fails to create just the same impression!!

With all these above tips you’ll definitely rock at organizing your kitchen, and a well-organized kitchen always makes it easy to work in there and saves much more time!! And that’s the essence of this post – have a well-organized kitchen and reduce your kitchen time!!

With an organized kitchen it will take much less time to do all the necessary work in the kitchen and you can have some extra kitchen-free hours in your day to do other important tasks or enjoy the time for yourself!

Just try out these tips and I’m sure you will be able to save some time while having a great-looking, well-organized kitchen!!